Face Contact Beijing, the thematic exhibition of Photo España Festival 2011, frames the concept of "Interfaces: Portraiture and Communication" to which this Spanish event was dedicated in its last edition. This leading project, to be presented at Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, can be seen as a continued exploration of the universal significance of portraiture and communication in our everyday life. In the active context of China, the discussion about photography, art and the contrast of what is both old and new, will create a humanistic effect different from that in the West.

When working with an interface as a kind of portraiture, the "face", underlined in this exhibition as a means of human communication, tries to communicate with the viewer's face producing a new meaning derived from this communication. The viewer will work on the information from the portraiture and will be projecting his (her) understanding and interpretation onto the "face" of the portraiture. The aim of this exhibition, as the focus of this extended field, is to examine the possibility of the communication between portraiture and the face by means of "interface" as a metaphor.

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Face Contact Beijing will show the works of twenty nine international artists from different countries and backgrounds and working in different ways, but all devoted to the exploration of the multiple meanings of portraiture using a concerted effort. Faces in images have long been used in communication to show dialogues between entities, and as an indication of the practical function of the face and portraiture in semantics. Face Contact Beijing completely rejects the view that it is an encyclopedic exhibition or that it presents one simplified theme, but it’s the result of a new curatorial practice. Moreover, this practice has changed the exhibition format in the museum’s permanent collections. Like many other cultural discourses, the contemporary curatorial concepts, greatly influenced by post-structuralism and post-modernism, escape from the big narratives and focus on fragments, micro-politics and the heterodox and pluralistic tendencies.

As a conclusion, this exhibition focuses on the means of communication through portraiture from its interior elements, thus revealing the diversity, complexity and intensity of modern portraiture and aesthetics — the artists construct and deconstruct these portraitures with great freedom. Beyond their own space and significance, the images are also displayed for the double "face contact", which, like the project, can be viewed as an effort to build the continuity of vision in order to respond and to explore the discourse and imagination involved in contemporary portraiture.

PHotoEspaña link: http://www.phedigital.com

About the Exhibition

Title: FACE CONTACT--Beijing

Artists: LILIANA ANGULO   ANANKÉ ASSEFF   BEAUTIFULAGONY.COM( LAUREN OLNEY & RICHARD AWRENCE)   JORGE BRANTMAYER   NANCY BURSON   LUIS CAMNITZER   JEANETTE CHÁVEZ   COLECTIVO MR MR   LUCFOSTHER DIOP   EUGENIO DITTBORN   HANS-PETER FELDMANN   JÉRÔME FORTIN   SHADI GHADIRIAN   SIMRYN GILL   SHILPA GUPTA   MONA HATOUM   JOSÉ IRAOLA   KAN XUAN   PEDRO LEMEBEL   JARBAS LOPES   CRISTINA LUCAS   DULCE PINZÓN   LILIANA PORTER   LIBIA PO

Curator: Gerardo Mosquera

Opening Ceremony: Saturday, April 28, 2012, 4:00 p.m.

Date: 2012.04.28 - 2012.06.24

Address: E06, 798 Art Zone, 4 Jiuxianqiao Rd., Chaoyang Dist., Beijing